ABSTRACT
Signal processing plays an important role in acoustics and vibration technology; for example, in the fields of SONAR, condition monitoring, reproduced sound fields and seismic analysis. The scope of methodologies available is enormous, ranging from filtering to higher order spectra, Bayesian analysis, non-linear dynamics and many more. This chapter is an intermediate-level review, moving from the foundations
of digital signal processing (DSP), presented in the earlier work (Hammond 1998), to an introduction to digital filter design, high-resolution spectral estimation and time-frequency methods. The intention is to provide the reader with a flavour of the area rather than attempt to review the full gamut of DSP techniques available. Section 1.2 provides a basic background to digital systems theory, whilst Sections 1.3 and 1.4 outline some of the methods that are used in designing digital filters. We then consider parametric spectral estimation methods in Section 1.5; many of these techniques employ an underlying model based on filtering operations. The final section discusses the problem of estimating the spectrum of a non-stationary signal using time-frequency analysis.
